To My Younger Brethren: Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work

by H. C. G. Moule

On that last subject it is not my intention to enter at any length. But a few words I may take this occasion to say, and I will assume that I am speaking to a younger Brother who in the main agrees with me in what are commonly called Evangelical Church principles. Let me first then counsel you to take care that no one shall be able, lawfully, to charge you with making light of the Sacraments,[19] or with leaving uncertain your belief as to their divine purpose and function. A ministry which is silent about them, and indistinct in its teaching on them, cannot in this respect be fully true to either the Prayer Book or the Bible. Let your instructions on this great subject, in public and in private, be definite, reverent, and full of thankfulness and praise for those great gifts of God. Then on the other hand, do not, if I may speak freely, while with all respect, think to honour the Sacraments by exaggeration, by speaking more of them than of that far greater thing, the blessed Grace of God in Christ, of which they are the "sure witnesses and effectual signs."[20] If I do not mistake, one of the most prevalent tendencies of current thought in the Church now is the tendency to invert, in a certain way, the relations between Sacrament and Grace; to develop a doctrine of the Sacrament such that the doctrine of Grace can be seen only, as it were, through it. And the result is, very often, so at least it seems to me to be, a very poor and attenuated presentation of the glorious things said in Scripture about "the grace of God which bringeth salvation," [Tit. ii. 11.] and about the work of pure and simple, but mysteriously mighty, faith in our appropriation of Christ's merits and our reception of Christ's living power by the Holy Ghost. Let no such inversion mark your teaching. And if I may give one further suggestion, I would say, remind yourself frequently of the very words of the Prayer Book (including the Catechism) and the Articles on these great subjects. And inform yourself to some extent, at first hand, of the views of the men who cast our Services and our Articles into their practically present shape; the views of Cranmer, of Ridley, of Jewell, and, just after them, of Hooker; not forgetting one great foreign theologian, Henry Bullinger, who exercised a special influence on the English divines of Edward and Elizabeth's time in the matter of sacramental doctrine.[21] You will find in him a full measure of holy reverence, and at the same time a luminous clearness and definiteness of exposition. The central idea of his teaching is the idea of the Covenant Seal, the "instrument" of solemn, valid, legal "conveyance."

[19] I mean of course Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, which alone the Church of England recognizes as Christian Sacraments, Sacramenta Evangelica, "Sacraments of the Gospel" (see Art. xxv., par. 2).

[20] Certa testimonia, efficacia signa (Art. xxv.). It is worth the while to point out that a "sign" is "effectual" when it effectually does the work of a sign, not some quite different work. A seal is an effectual seal, not because, conceivably, its matter could be used as a powerful medicine, but because, attached to its document, it effectually seals the document's validity. A seal is in this respect a special sort of "effectual sign." And so are the Sacraments.

[21] See the Parker Society's collection of authors for Bullinger's Decades, or Doctrinal Sermons; officially recognized as a body of divinity by the Church of England in Elizabeth's reign.

MISTAKES ABOUT CHURCH DOCTRINE.

While on the subject of Church Doctrine, I may go a little further, and remind you how very likely you are to discover in your rounds many mistakes about both the doctrine and the government of the Church of England. I have had considerable experience of such questions in the way of private pastoral ministry; I have found pious dissenters, or church-people whom they had influenced, fully persuaded that the Church of England teaches unconditional regeneration in the hour of Baptism, that she teaches at least a near approach to Transubstantiation, that she entrusts to her priests the power of conferring or withholding the divine forgiveness, and that, officially and in set terms, she "unchurches" all communities not episcopally organized.[22] It is well to be quite sure that these beliefs about the Church are mistakes, provably such, in the light of the Prayer Book and Articles, and of history. It has been my happiness to bring some such questioners as I have described to "sincere and conscientious communion with" the Church of England, in a loyalty which leaves ample room for loving sympathy with all true Christians. And the chief means has been the production of proof that the Church herself, as distinguished from particular teachers and leaders in the Church, does not teach the tenets alleged.

[22] As regards the Scottish and Continental Protestant Churches it is not too much to say that, with the very rarest exceptions, English Church writers of all schools regarded them as "Sister Churches of the Reformation"—till about 1830.

DEFECTIVE VIEWS OF SIN.

But to come back to matters more primary than even these; I must remind my younger Brother that there is, all around him, in the average circles of even church-going people, a sorrowfully faint insight into the sinfulness of Sin; into the terrible realities of its guilt before God (a point too often absent from even earnest modern teaching), and of its power; yes, and into its true nature, as it comes out, not in outbursts of word or deed, or in practices which public opinion condemns, but in imagination, in desire, in tone. It may surprise us (when we think how very elementary are the spiritual principles involved), but I fear it is a fact, that sin is regarded by vast numbers of church-people (I am not thinking at all of "the lapsed masses" now) as a matter of little importance if it does not come out in some very positive form. Multitudes among us are quite insensible to the spiritual penetration of the law of God, and have never given a thought to the question of a heart-surrender to His will in everything, and the sin of merely withholding that surrender.

Then, to take another primary subject of a different class; there is a wide and general ignorance of the great lines of Christian Evidence, and a large open door accordingly for the active attacks of shallow, or subtle, unbelief. Few have ever been taught in any definite way the supreme significance in this respect of the fact of the Lord's Resurrection, and its mighty walls of proof; and the reasons for our belief that the Bible is indeed not of man but of God; the witness of history to prophecy; and so on.